This is a blog dedicated to highlight the issue of Christian Persecution in India. The posts here in contain information about Christian Persecution in India from various sources with links and some exclusive to us. No Copyright infringement is intended. This is only for the purpose of spreading awareness about the ongoing Christian persecution in India. We have no political affiliations. We hope for a nation where all could live in peace with each other.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Bhopal, Oct 28: Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad has opposed the reservation meant for the converted Muslim and Christian tribals, as the culture and tradition is the sole identity of the tribals. However In an attempt to solve the problems of the tribal areas and keeping in mind the progress among the tribal areas, the meeting for the tribal region heads of Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parisad took place in Bhopal on 27 and 28 October respectively.

Keeping in mind the existing problems of the students and their hostel, during this year a survey of all the tribal hostel of the country have been done in which the current arrangement and ambience regarding the hostel were discussed. A cooperative step was taken for all the troubles noticed after the assessment of the region which results in a new plan of 65 crore for Maharastra meant for new hostel construction and on the spot distribution of the pending scholarship to the students.

It is notable that there will be a report on the hostel survey in Kanpur National Session taking place in the coming month of December. Keeping in mind the challenges of coming time, ABVP is planning programs like career guidance for the tribal students. Meanwhile Asha Lakda National Office Bearer for ABVP said that they are opposed to the reservation given to the converted Muslims and Christian tribals. Lakda said that the converted tribals are leaving behind their culture and tradition and should not be eligible for any caste-based reservations. However they clarified that they are not against the Muslim and Christian community in any way.

Indore, Oct 28: People belonging to Christian community staged silent demonstration against the assaulting incident met by five nuns of the community two days ago at Bhagirathpura in Indore. They also demanded that strict action should be taken by the administration against the persons involved in the attack on nuns.

While, one of the accused Shivcharan Singh Lodhi involved in the case of assaulting nuns have lodged an FIR with Banganga Police against the nuns for their alleged involvement in conversion activities. The police have booked the nuns under section 3, 4, 5 of the freedom of religion act.

The police had reluctantly registered a case against accused Shivcharan Singh and three others for assaulting nuns while they were heading back to church after a prayer held at the house, owned by a driver in Bhagirathpura area on Friday night. On the report of Anil Minj, the police had registered the case against Shivcharan, Manju and three others for allegedly assaulting the nuns on Friday.

However, accused Shivcharan have claimed in his complaint that all the five nuns including Sugandhi, Shweta, Anna, Sariuja, Kavita along with Anil and Joseph were involved in conversion activities. He informed that they had even tried to offer Rs 15,000 to the locals for conversion to Christianity. The police have begun the investigation, while no arrest has been made in both the cases.

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Bhopal : A group of people wearing khaki shorts and white shirts with sticks barged into Mr. Anil ‘s house. The sisters along with people were praying in the house of Mr. Anil who is a catholic and driver of the Franciscan clarist sisters. The incident took place at around 8.30 pm. A mob allegedly lead by Mr. Mehra, Mr. Shivcharan and Manju began to beat them falsely accusing them of attempt to convert. The incident took place at shukliya ,15 kilometers away from Nanda Nagar Indore city in Madhya Pradesh. The sisters were reached back to the hospital with the help of district collector of Indore.

The sisters who were beaten are Srs. Jincy (4o), Sr. Sayujia (27), Sr. Pavitra (26), Sr. Sweta (26) and Sr. Anna Maria (27). All of them are injured, the condition of Sr. Jincy is said to be serious with head injuries. She is still in the hospital.

Shukliya area comes under the Banganga police station. The Police refused to file FIR till 7 pm in the evening on 26th October. The Additional S.P and CSP Mr. Parasor said to have threatened the Christians of dare consequences of filing the FIR. By evening around 6 pm Fr. Joseph Vallasery informed the Regional Public Relations Office , Bhopal, of the worsening situation in Indore. He said, “Due to Global Industrial Meet no police officer or any senior officer is ready to listen to any thing, even the media refused to cover the news from Indore sighting this.”

After discussions with Archbishop Dr. Leo Cornelio, Chairman, Catholic Bishops Council of Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh, Fr. Anand Muttungal, Regional Public Relations Officer & Spokesperson, spoke over the phone to Shri. A R Pawar IPS, Director General of Police, Madhya Pradesh, about the dawn to dusk hunger strike that church plans for 27th October in Indore which is also the day of the Global investors meet in protest against the inaction of the police and their refusal to file FIR.” The DGP assured immediate action and registration of the FIR.

Around 8 pm the DIG and SP Indore spoke to us and assured us of immediate action. They also requested to withdraw the hunger strike planned for 27th October. Police immediately sprang in to action. Taking into consideration of the larger interest of Madhya Pradesh in terms development expected through Global Industrial Meet , Catholic Church of Madhya Pradesh differed the date to 28th October 2007.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Pastor Pran Ranjan Mali (Independent), Pastor Santosh Kumar Majhi(IPC), Pastor Jayson Badra & Pastor Roshan Lima(BCI), along with other friends are engaged in the evangelical work & have been preaching the gospel in Jagatsingpur District of Orissa, and the nearby villages for many years.

On Tuesday October 23rd these Pastors were on their Mission distributing the 100 New Testaments & Gospel Tracts to 42 Mouza village under Govindpur P.S. of Cuttack District.

They arrived at the village at around 10AM and began going door to door selling of the New Testaments & free distribution of different gospel tracts.

They continued to evangelize till 2 PM undisturbed and sold 40 New Testaments & distributed many tracts of around 100 gospel tracts.

Suddenly at around 2.15 PM, they were followed with a group of 15 to 16 Hindu fanatics belonged to Sangh Parivar who gheraoed & stopped them in continuing the gospel work. They accused & scolded them with vulgar words & took them forcibly to their village temple while threatening to tonsure them after some time.

As some of the radicals guarded these poor, innocent evangelists & organised a Brahmin to perform the ritual of Tonsuring & Sprinkling with Cow's urine in order to 'sanctify these 4 Pastors.

Thanks be to our Sovereign Lord, who protected these Pastors like Daniel in the Den of the Lion

The radicals could not organize things instantly, they had no alternative but to take them again forcibly to the Police station & handed them over there with a false charge of doing forcible conversion violating OFRA ACT( Orissa Freedom of Religion Act.

Police after arresting, also scolded them on the same ground and put them in the Custody the last whole night with a threatened note that they will forward them to the Court today. Police never allowed them to talk to anybody.

The Church of God in Raipur Chhattisgarh has become the target of fascist Hindutva forces as the dharma sena accompanied by the police cross all limits and infringe on the rights of the minority community in the city.

The Church of God was having a 5 day convention from the 16th to the 21st October 2007 during which they, like any other Church, had a baptism ceremony for their members. What they did not know was that the Dharma Sena recorded the baptism ceremony secretly and passed on the video to the police citing it as a (sic) proof that the Church was indulging in forcible conversions.

The police instead of registering a case against the Dharma Sena of intruding in privacy, registered a case against the Church of God. In the evening the police further tried to disrupt the Church service by entering the Church premises forcefully accompanied by the Dharma Sena activists. The CSP Shashi Mohan Singh, the SP Umed Lal Singh, the Raipur magistrate and Dharma Sena activists were the ones tried to break in the Church. They left only when the Church gave them a list of the people baptized and after interrogating some of the newly baptized members. This is an out and out trampling of the fundamental rights of the minority community and can only be termed as “dadagiri” in the best possible terms.

The Church of God with membership of over a thousand is easily capable of bringing the city to a standstill but the chose to look otherwise and were rewarded with stone pelting in the nights.

For the last few days the Church has been regularly been pelted by stones and the Dharma Sena officials are giving slanderous statements on the local TV channels. The recent threat made by the Dharma Sena chief is that, “We will go all out and destroy them (Christians).” With the BJP in power in the state, what else can one expect?

Friday, October 12, 2007

FAMILY OF THE VICTIM (PASTOR CHAINU PATEL): Wife - Housewife and ministers with husbandYounger brother - Chaitu,lives with Pr Chainu and studies in class 12thFather & Mother - lives in Kaneri village, near Kondagaon.CHURCH : House church in Murnar is the part of the Believers Church (GFA), Kanker, Chhattisgarh. It is a growing church amidst difficult circumstances. This house church was started about 3 years back.ORGANIZATION : Believers Church in India (GFA)LOCATION : Murnar is a small village, about 15 kms from Kanker and Keshkal each. Murnar falls under Murven gram panchayat and under the jurisdiction of Kondagaon Sessions Court. It is situated in Bastar(Jagdalpur) district, Chhattisgarh, India.

Kanker is a small town and the district headquarter of North Bastar. Keshkal is a large village on the national highway. There has been much persecution of the Christians in last three years in Kanker town and nearby villages and in the villages near Kondagaon . Villages of Kanker and Jagdalpur districts are heavily under influence of naxalism.

INCIDENT :Date - October 5'2007Time - 04:00 PMThree days fasting prayer was arranged in the house of Sagundas Jurri from October 4th to 6th. Sagundas is an unbaptised believer, who has opened his house many times for meeting of the church. There are 5 believer families in the village. There were about 20 persons including women and children, present in the meeting. Most of them were believers from non Christian background. At about 02:00 PM on October 5th, a group of fundamentalists sent message to Pastor Chainu Patel and Sagundas to appear before the village council of Gond tribal community . Since fasting prayer was going on, they refused. After sometime, same message was sent to them again. They again expressed their inability to appear. Finally at about 04:00 PM, 15 of them led by Rameshwar Usendi stormed into the house. They were shouting slogans to stop conversions and were also shouting false allegations against conversions. Local believers were threatened to hold such meetings. Similar incident occurred in Dundera village, half a kilometer away from Murnar, about a month back. A pastor was similarly questioned, threatened and forced to stop holding meeting in the village. Pastor Chainu Patel and Sagundas were forced by this fundamentalist group to accompany them on a tractor to the alleged meeting of the Gond community at nearby village of Munver. But instead of the aforesaid meeting, Pastor Chainu Patel and Sagundas were staraightway taken to Keshkal police station and were handed over to the police. A group of fundamentalist people was already present there. The complaint was lodged by Rameshwar Usendi. He accused them of conversion by allurement and hurting the religious sentiments. FIR was lodged against Pr Chainu Patel and Sagunram under section 295(A) and Chhattisgarh Freedom of Religion Bill. No complaint against the assailants has been registered.CURRENT SITUATION:Bail application has been rejected in the lower court of Keshkal on October 6th and the police has obtained remand upto October 18th.Preparation is underway to file the bail application in the Sessions Court of Kondagaon.By-election in Keshkal is likely to be held in the month of November. Mr Mahesh Baghel of the BJP was MLA from this seat. He died in a road accident about a month back. This incident of atrocity against the Christians is directly corelated with BJP's attempt to hold the seat, by polarising the "Hindu votes".

ACTION BY THE FORUM:

Information of the attack came to the leaders of Chhattisgarh Christian Forum at about 10:00 AM on October 6th. Forum took immediate steps to build up pressure upon police and administration to take proper action against the assailants and to protect the village congregation. Local pastors and leaders of Kanker, Keshkal and Kondagaon were mobilised to come forward and express their solidarity with fellow brothers. A delegation of about 30 pastors and Christian leaders of Jagdalpur were mobilised immediately to meet the Superintendent of Police of Bastar(Jagdalpur) to present the real picture before him. The Forum has been in continuous touch with the local leaders.The Forum works in cooperation with EFI and Open Doors India.PRAYER REQUEST:Please uphold Pr Chainu Patel, Sagundas and the congregation before the Throne of Grace.